Very Veggie Creative Food Day

Image via Amy Atlas Events

Amy Atlas has been an inspiration to me for a couple of years now. I love her work and consider her one of the first trendsetters of the over-the-top dessert/candy table craze. There are others doing the same thing now, but not with as much skill, elegance and grace that Amy has. I love following her blog and seeing the behind-the-scenes peaks at what it takes to go into her extremely creative events.

The one thing that has always slightly bothered me, beautiful as the tables are, it’s all desserts, candies, and sweets (hence the name dessert tables) and maybe not all that practical for an entire event spread... but then I saw a beautiful departure a couple months ago: A fruit and veggie table.

Image via Amy Atlas Events

HOW PERFECT? I love vegetables, my previous co-workers thought I was nuts for my fanatical nature about the nutritious and delicious food group. How can you not love them? They’re colorful, crisp, fresh and you can eat them all day long and not feel guilty about them what-so-ever. So after seeing Amy’s inspiration table and announcing Friday as a “creative” food day, I had no second guessing about what I was going to bring (and seeing as I gave up desserts for Lent, it was even more of an automatic decision) veggies was on the menu!

Below is my scaled-down version:

I paired the veggies with SkinnyTaste’s Creamy Cilantro Dressing. I highly recommend this recipe. I got tons of compliments on the dip (and the presentation) and can't wait to use it as dressing for salads. Instead of using buttermilk, I made a buttermilk substitute with 1 1/2 tsp lemon juice and 1/2 cup milk and letting rest for 5 minutes. SkinnyTaste focuses on favorite dishes, made skinny, often supplying the Weight Watchers points as well, this recipe is 0 points! A perfect snack for the entire day!

Pinwheel How-To

Ask and you shall receive. A drill was on my Christmas list and that's exactly what Santa brought. I didn't have any specific projects in mind for my shiny new drill, so when I first got it I was drilling holes in cardboard boxes just to "practice" (and because it was fun). Now, I'm happy to report I've use my drill for three real-life projects! The first of which was to create pinwheels for the Pinwheel Baby Shower, sure I could've just made them look cute and not actually functional and spinning, but where's the fun in that?

Here's the directions:

Use the template below to cut 4" squares from double-sided scrap-booking paper. I used the 4" size for the cupcake toppers, but you can always scale the template up or down as needed. I created some larger pinwheels for party decor as well.

The black dots indicate hole punches

I used my handy-dandy drill with a small bit to drill holes into wooden craft sticks (below).

Thread a tiny brad (found in the scrapbooking section) through each of the holes in the paper template, saving the one in the center of the paper for last and then through the craft stick. And there you have it, a functional, spinning pinwheel! I made several of these for the shower and many guests kept them as a party favor and are using them as decor in their office. They're so cute, it makes me happy every time I see one!

Easter Basket Fun

Yesterday one of my friends set up an Easter Basket swap at work. I was looking forward to it all week. Here's the basket I made for a co-worker, filled with things for her garden and all her favorite candies.

Below is the basket I received, perfect additions for my garden! Complete with a parsley plant, a spearmint plant, a basil-in-a-bag starter kit, triple-blade herb shears (amazing!), a tea towel, chocolate-covered sunflower seeds, and a retro vase. Everything was so perfect for me, so practical... herbs, tea towels, and I didn't want a lot of candy... absolutely delightful.

The swap was so much and it was great to see what everyone else got, there was a lot of thought and love put into each basket. Thanks Em for organizing!

Happy Easter!

Pinwheel Baby Shower

Almost one month ago we held a baby shower at work for one of my good friends, Megan, who is due any day (I'm constantly jumping at any noise my phone makes to see if her little cupcake is here). Her shower didn't have a theme per se, but it was one of my favorite to plan and coordinate.

Look at the cute, happy couple, they'll make an adorable baby!

We tried to follow an "on-a-stick" theme for the food with Dark Chocolate dipped cheesecake lollipops, cherry pie on a stick (made by a co-worker, how clever?), and cupcakes adorned with pinwheels, you can see our tiny wind farm in the background with all those pinwheel cupcakes.

Guests enjoying the food on a stick and our blue and green poofs.

Me, our guest of honor, and Lindsay, another host; all coordinated with the party colors! (surprise, surprise)

A card attendees filled out with their guesses for the birthday of baby boy Langford. I'm guessing they're little cupcake will arrive very soon...

Baby Onesies

A couple weeks back one my friends had a baby shower and I made a couple onesies for their new little guy. Even though they know it's a boy, I wanted to make some gender neutral items. I had to make a turtle design, as it is my namesake... a robot to match some of the room decor... and a whale, because it's just plain cute!

100" Cake for Hallmark

Looky! That's me in the front in our bakers coats! From the KC Star

Whew! Last week was a long one, but fun. Last Monday was Hallmark Card's 100th birthday (actually 100 years + 1 day) and I got to be part of the celebration! In early December the Centennial committee came to our department and asked us to design a birthday cake for Hallmark's birthday celebration. Three designers in our group collaborated on the conceptual design of the cake. We wanted to incorporate elements from the centennial ribbon illustration (shown below in the banners).

We wanted to keep the cake white like the background of the illustration, but to give it more interest we put a different surface treatment on each layer (which was my main contribution). We then created ribbons to wrap around the cake to show a continuous timeline of Hallmark's history and elevate the gold crown above the top layer of the cake.

The picture is from Hallmark's birthday celebration, where the cake was unveiled as a surprise to Hallmark employees. The cake is on display at Hallmark headquarters for a couple of weeks and then it will move to the Hallmark Visitors Center as a permanent display. Come check it out sometime. As a bonus I left my "mark" on the bottom layer of the cake... see if you can find it!

Happy belated birthday Hallmark, I'm grateful to be part of the celebration and proud to call myself a Hallmarker!

Cookie Party: Year 3

The cookies have been baked, decorated and exchanged. Yesterday was our 3rd annual cookie party, which went as smooth as possible. We had over 2,300 cookies in our apartment which is even more than last year! I can't believe the delicious variety that we got this year, everyone brought such yummy cookies.

Here are all of the cookies on my bed, our buffet table! We had Almond Bark Pretzels, Mini Chocolate Chip, Gingerbread Men & Women, Gooey Butter Cake Cookies, Peanut Brittle, Peanut Butter Blossoms, Peanut Butter Cups, Reindeer Cookies, Rolo Pretzel Bites, Chocolate Mint Bars (my fav), Lemon Drop Cookies, Chow Candy, Chocolate Chip Brownie Bars, Strawberry Shortbread Thumbprints (my recipe), Chocolate Rum Balls, Snickerdoodle, Chocolate Chocolate Chip, and of course, Sugar Cookies! Whew!

A very blurry picture of some of the attendees and fabulous decorators!

A sampling a beautiful cookies.

This year my roommate and I each made apron's to give as prizes for the "Best Collection" and "People's Choice" contest winners. Above are the "Best Collection" cookies.

The white on white snowflake cookies won the "People's Choice" award.

Here are my decorated cookies with lots of blue and green, my favorite Christmas colors!

And the final assortment, I have three big boxes packed with deliciousness and ready to hand out!

Yum.

It's that time of year... cookie time!

Invitations are out for our 3rd annual cookie party! I was really happy with the invites this year, I've wanted to do something more extravagant the past couple of years, but I always have a hard time pulling it off in time. This year the invitations came with a cute little cookie cutter and multi-page invitation all wrapped up with bakery thread!







After last year's huge extravaganza, we unfortunately had to cut back on the guest list. There just isn't enough room in our tiny little apartment. It should be fun regardless! We're even having a cookie decorating context with prizes!

Jae's Bridal Shower

Speaking of weddings... we had a bridal shower for one of my co-workers on Wednesday to celebrate her up-coming union. This may have been my favorite shower so far! Jae made it easy on us and had originally created two color palettes for her wedding; one with soft pinks & golds, the other with pinks & greens. She decided to use the pink & gold for her wedding and we used the pink & green palette for the shower! Jae had also originally intended on using a bird motif in her wedding, but wasn't able to, so we picked up that theme and I created some "Love Birds" for her shower.

Above the beautiful bride with her traditional bridal shower bow bouquet to use during her rehearsal, the delicious party spread, flower decorations Dayle and I made, and the gift table with the laser-cut bird & heart strings. So pretty in pink!

'Lil Monkey Baby Shower

Images on mood-board are from Martha Stewart, Amy Atlas, and Paul Frank.

This past week we had a Banana Split baby shower to celebrate the anticipated arrival of a co-worker's baby boy. She's decorating the baby's room in a monkey-theme, so we thought a banana-split party was appropriate. I've held off on posting the mood board and other images, to keep the shower as much of a surprise as possible. The shower turned out perfect and went off without a hitch... more images from the actual shower to come soon!

The soon-to-be parents are keeping the name of the baby a big secret, so we played a guessing game with the shower attendees. We handed out cards to guess the name, date, weight, and *length of the baby.
*I put height on the actual card, but learned during the shower that this is typically known as length for babies... leave it to a non-parent to make the cards!

Have your cake...

Finally! After all this time, I finally got around to posting pictures of the cake I made for my grandmother's 85th birthday party over Thanksgiving. The cake is a 4 layer (the 4th layer was insisted on by my grandma) lemon cake with lemon frosting and lavender fondant flowers. It was a big hit! Also included are pictures of an apple dessert and delicious pie!

2,160+ Cookies

Sunday my roommate and I held our 2nd annual Christmas Cookie Exchange, this year we had 13 guests who each brought 12 dozen cookies of their choice... that's right, over 2,160 cookies in our 950 square foot apartment! We used my bed as our "buffet table" and had 3 cookie decorating stations set up.

Above is a picture SweetNee took at the event. More to come on this, once I have a working computer, I just couldn't resist!

Owl Shower

We finally had our orange and blue owl shower this past week. I love how the colors turned out, there was lots of orange, blue, and brown; everything coordinated perfectly from the food to the table service to the gift wrap! I can't wait to plan the next shower and already have lots of ideas!

12 dozen!?!?!

It's that time of year again... christmas cookie time! Last week we sent out invitations for our 2nd Annual Christmas Cookie Party. It's going to be a lot bigger this year... last year we had 2 guests, this year we've invited 22 lovely ladies! AND we're asking each woman to bring 12 dozen cookies, so each person goes home with a good number of each kind, meaning if everyone shows up we will have 3,168 cookies in our apartment! I think our apartment will be bursting at the seams and I have no idea where we're going to put all those people and cookies!

We've asked each guest to RSVP with the kind of cookie they're bringing, so far we have Chocolate Crinkles, Sugar Cookies, Gingersnaps, Spritz, Pecan Tarts, and last but definitely not least Peanut Butter Blossoms (my fav)!

Guess whooo!

My manager is having a baby boy in December; so a couple co-workers and I have been working on shower themes for him. We recently sent out the above invitation for the party.

The baby bedding this super cute Silly Owl bedding, so we decided to really play up the owl theme and colors in the party. We're using lots of orange and warm gray with hits of light blue. And of course, no owl-themed party would be complete without Tootsie Pops!

Everything Leo & Amy have picked out for their baby room is super modern, so we want to carry the same simplicity through to the party. We're using the modern baby shower from Blueprint as inspiration, it's even the right colors!

Finally Finished!

I have been working on my Grandma's 85th birthday party for the longest time and we finally had enough of it planned to send invitations. I got them all sent out on Wednesday morning. Here is the final, purple and bird-loving invitation!

Is Autumn here yet?

Some friends and I are planning a fall party to celebrate the upcoming season with all the best foods, like pumpkin (not my fav), apples, squash and all the other yummy goodness that autumn brings. I am excited for the cool weather and especially the beautiful color palettes! I created some mood boards to show my excitement...

Photos are from stock.xchng and Martha Stewart.

To Have and To Hold – Chicago Style

On Saturday we attended the wedding of Justin and Jessi Scurte in Joliet, IL. It was absolutely gorgeous. First, we were greeted by a yummy gift bag filled with the couple’s favorite treats at the hotel. The wedding ceremony was held in Bird Haven Park in Joliet, where there were many gardens and greenhouses to tour and enjoy and created a gorgeous backdrop for the ceremony. GOU-GAR! (I added that for Jon & Jessie)

Jessi’s colors were raspberry, chartreuse and chocolate brown. The bridesmaids wore strapless, tea-length raspberry dresses and carried white and green flowers with a chartreuse ribbon around them. Justin and the groomsmen wore chocolate brown tuxedo’s with chartreuse vests. When Jessi walked down the isle, she looked stunning. The dress she picked fit her style perfectly and she had a cute short veil, also a perfect match.
The reception was held at the Joliet Union Station, which was very impressive as well and decked out in white and pink calla lilies and chocolate brown paper & linen accents. At the reception we had a plethora of appetizers, a delicious meal, sweets table and endless dancing! I couldn’t be happier for the couple, congratulations Jessi & Justin!

Picture Above: GD07 (minus Jenna); Jessie, Jon, & me at the bar between events

85 years....

I am working on planning decorations and menus for my Grandma's 85th birthday party, which will be celebrated on Thanksgiving weekend. She LOVES purple, so that is the theme: Purple Thanksgiving. Above are some images I am using as inspiration for the party. Yay!